DeWayne Wickham: Romney needs more damage control

DeWayne Wickham

Chris Kyriakydes has all the trappings of a Mitt Romney supporter. He's a white, 51-year-old whose Greek immigrant father was a successful restaurateur and real estate investor in Connecticut. Chris Kyriakydes made a small fortune in the South Florida's real estate market and found his way onto cable television as The Flaming Greek, a chef who produces amazing meals with a propane torch.

But, Kyriakydes told me he's going to vote for Barack Obama, which means you can count him among the electorate Romney wrote off in May during a private meeting with wealthy donors in nearby Boca Raton.

"There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what," Romney said then. These people are with Obama because they're dependent upon government, see themselves as victims, believe government has a responsibility to care for them, and think they are "entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it," Romney said.

Kyriakydes is no moocher. He is, however, a glaring example of Romney's misread of Obama's supporters. Kyriakydes lost more than $3 million worth of investment property when the real estate market collapsed. He worries that Romney won't help people like him.

"I think Republicans are for the higher-class people who have got the money," Kyriakydes said. "Obama's trying to help the average person."

To win the presidency, Romney must rally voters like Kyriakydes to his side. Last week, the former Massachusetts governor tried to undo his dismissal of Obama's supporters as moochers when he told a Miami audience: "My campaign is about the 100 percent of Americans." But, with every new poll, it appears Obama's lead over Romney is widening, as the GOP candidate's campaign hits one pothole after another.

In the midst of his damage-control swing through Florida last week, Romney's campaign co-chair, former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, quit to take a lobbying job. And Romney's release of his 2011 tax return (he released his 2010 return earlier this year) did little to dampen Democrats' demand that he be more forthcoming. President Obama has made public his past 12 tax returns.

Even an attempt by Romney to use a 1998 video of Obama discussing redistribution of wealth fizzled. "I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody's got a shot," Obama said at a Loyola University (of Chicago) conference. But, a full viewing of that tape shows that Obama was pushing for a competitive, free-market system - a theme he repeated during the 2008 presidential campaign.

Romney scoffs at the idea. "I think a society based upon a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that's the wrong course for America," he told Fox News' Neil Cavuto.

But, of course, there's nothing neither new nor draconian about the idea of wealth redistribution in this country. As a legal matter, that issue was settled in 1913 when a constitutional amendment that gave Congress the power to tax personal income was ratified.

As a matter of national policy, wealth redistribution has been validated by the nation's embrace of Social Security, Medicare, farm subsidies, veterans' benefits and other programs that use tax dollars to give people a fair shot at life.

"I think (Obama's) going to be better at turning things around because Democrats are better at taking care of people who are down," chef Kyriakydes said. And it is this growing perception of Republican cold-heartedness that Romney must overcome to wrest the presidency from Obama.

DeWayne Wickham is a political writer for USA TODAY. Contact him at DeWayneWickham@aol.com.

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DeWayne Wickham: Romney needs more damage control

Chris Kyriakydes has all the trappings of a Mitt Romney supporter. He's a white, 51-year-old whose Greek immigrant father was a successful restaurateur and real estate investor in Connecticut.